Proposed data centre will release 23 Hiroshima atomic bomb worth of energy a day
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17 points
26 comments
November 01, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (8 comments)
andsoitis
How is comparing energy usage of a facility like a data center to a weapon that killed millions of people many decades ago an illuminating comparison? It is like comparing a banana to a chair.
matja
> 18 gigawatts of heat a day Dimensional error. Do they mean 18 GWh per day = 64.8 TJ / day = 750 MW ? Or is this thing really going to use twice as much power as the largest nuclear power plant that currently exists?
Lerc
I believe we have reached a new threshold in hyperbolic headlines.
Someone
About the Hiroshima bomb, google tells me “Once initiated, the actual nuclear fission process and energy release happened almost instantaneously in a fraction of a microsecond.” A day has 86,400 seconds, so that’s about 11 orders of magnitude. That makes this a fairly meaningless comparison.
randerson
A toaster also releases 23 Hiroshimas worth of energy over a long enough time frame. Its when it all releases at once that you should be concerned.
jokoon
Are there studies regarding the improvement of productivity with AI? Or at least economic measurements in terms of money/profits brought by companies/entities who used it? I mean of course it's going to depend on the field and how it's being used, but there could be a comparison between how much money was spent making AI overall, and how much actual measurable good things it brought. And I don't mean the amount of customers paying for AI, I mean an actual demonstration that AI is worth doing.
sandworm101
Strange fact: in terms of heat energy, the hiroshima bomb released far less energy than the fire it ignited. Much of the total destruction seen in footage was the result of the massive instantaneous fire of a woodem city. Had it been a concrete city, things would have looked very different. A forest fire can release many hiroshimas of energy every day, and canada has more than a few of those each year.
ipsum2
Hiroshima energy equivalents is surely a perfectly and not insensitive way of measuring energy. New York City uses 1 hiroshima bomb-energy every 3 hours.